Wireless transmission method for VGA capsule endoscopy using Manchester encoding

Purpose: Recently, technologies related to endoscopes have been rapidly developing with the improvements in electronics and MEMS technology. The human intestine is very long and twisted, and traditional wired endoscopes are able to monitor the entire intestine except for the small intestine. To overcome the limited view of wired endoscopes, the capsule endoscope has been developed. There are some commercial capsule endoscopes and others under development, but these capsule endoscopes have been limited to CIF images, and the image transmission rate is 2 frames per second. To obtain high-quality images, fast wireless communication technology is needed. Methods: In this paper, the direct transmission of distal images through Manchester code and its receiving algorithm are proposed to obtain endoscope images with higher quality and faster transmission rate than with conventional capsule endoscopes. Generally, the baseband signal cannot be radiated from an antenna because of its large bandwidth and low frequency band, but the Manchester code can solve these problems. To validate the proposed wireless transmission method and its receiving algorithm, computer simulations and experiments have been performed. Results: Experimental results verify that the proposed wireless transmission method can transmit VGA-grade images of 640 × 480 pixels with a faster frame rate of about 3 frames per second compared to conventional capsule endoscope methods. Conclusions: Therefore, it is expected that the proposed VGA transmission method can be applied to improve the performance of capsule endoscopes.